Energy Secretary Chris Wright plans to talk this week with major oil industry executives about bringing Trump’s plan to fruition, according to Bloomberg News and other outlets. Oil analysts have predicted that crude output in Venezuela could increase up to half a million barrels per day in the next two years if Venezuela is politically stable and U.S. companies invest there.

“This would still only be about half the level seen in the heyday of oil production,” Capital Economics told Reuters.

U.S. forces wrested power from former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro over the weekend, citing concerns that he stole oil from the United States, among other accusations. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz and other leading officials have backed the administration’s efforts to “run” Venezuela, arguing the “illegitimate” Maduro regime can not be trusted to manage a country that holds the largest reserves of oil in the world.

“We’ll run it properly. We’ll run it professionally. We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world going in and invest billions and billions of dollars and take out money, use that money in Venezuela,” Trump said Saturday during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, detailing the extraordinary U.S. military operation that captured Maduro and took him to stand trial on narco-terrorism charges in New York.

“We’re going to be a team that’s working with the people of Venezuela to make sure we have Venezuela right … [and] the biggest beneficiary is going to be the people of Venezuela, and also, I can’t stress this strongly enough, the people that got thrown out of Venezuela that are now in the United States,” the president added. “Because for us to just leave — Who’s going to take over? I mean, there is nobody to take over. … If we just left, it would have zero chance of ever coming back.”

Venezuela’s energy sector has faced a steep decline in recent decades because the economy has contracted under socialist governments that have controlled Caracas since the late 1990s.

The “miracle country” was known as one of the wealthiest in South America in the early and mid-1900s, due to its thriving oil industry. But it saw opportunity drift in the ’70s and ’80s amid rising corruption and mismanagement, leading to a poverty rate of 46% and the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998.

However, the socialist reforms Chavez enacted, which were expanded upon by Maduro after he assumed the presidency in 2013, failed to return Caracas to its pinnacle, with some experts stating the country’s poverty rate reached as high as “above 91%” in 2024.

As conditions have worsened, roughly 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country, many to the U.S., since 2014, according to estimates from the U.N. The mass emigration, which marks the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history, comes as the Maduro regime has faced international condemnation for holding onto power by conducting sham elections.

Global sanctions targeting Maduro’s regime further crippled Venezuela’s oil industry. Caracas produced around 1.1 million oil barrels per day in 2025. That number compares to the U.S.’s 13.5 bpd the same year, even though Venezuela’s oil reserves are nearly four times greater than those of the U.S.

This week, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado backed the Trump administration’s efforts to revitalize the country’s oil economy. The pro-democracy activist has emerged in recent years as the primary challenger to Maduro’s regime.

OIL INDUSTRY WINNERS FROM MADURO CAPTURE

“We will turn Venezuela into the energy hub of the Americas,” she said during an appearance on Fox News’s Hannity. “We will bring rule of law. We will open markets. We will give security to foreign investment. Third, we’ll bring millions of Venezuelans that have been forced to flee their country back home, to build a strong nation, prosperous nation, open society. We will [leave] behind all the destruction this socialist regime, criminal regime, has brought to our people and turn Venezuela into the main ally of the United States in Latin America.”

The same day, Waltz told international leaders assembled for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting that Venezuela’s massive energy reserves must not be under the control “of illegitimate leaders” and “a handful of oligarchs.”